Jane M. Scott was a British theatre manager, performer, and playwright

Playwright

A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

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With her father, John Scott (1752–1838), Jane developed the Sans Pareil Theatre

Adelphi Theatre

The Adelphi Theatre is a 1500-seat West End theatre, located on the Strand in the City of Westminster. The present building is the fourth on the site. The theatre has specialised in comedy and musical theatre, and today it is a receiving house for a variety of productions, including many musicals...

 (later named the Adelphi), where they offered music and light shows. They gathered a theatrical company and by 1809 the theatre was licensed for musical entertainments, pantomime

Pantomime

Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...

, and burletta.

Scott wrote more than fifty stage pieces in an array of genres: melodramas, pantomimes, farces, comic operettas

Comic opera

Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...

, historical dramas, and adaptations, as well as translations.

The Sans Pareil was significant in the move towards "free" theatre and away from the monopolies that dominated licensed theatre at the time. Jacky Bratton credits Scott's role in London theatre: "She had her finger on the pulse of a new world of entertainment for all, and her management of the theatre she created is important for its responsive and intelligent reading of the new audiences and the provision of exciting work for them to enjoy."

Scott retired in 1819 and married John Davies Middleton (1790–1867). She lived in Surrey until her death, in 1839, aged 59 or 60, from breast cancer

Breast cancer

Breast cancer is cancer originating from breast tissue, most commonly from the inner lining of milk ducts or the lobules that supply the ducts with milk. Cancers originating from ducts are known as ductal carcinomas; those originating from lobules are known as lobular carcinomas...

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External links

• Whackham and Windham, The Wrangling Lawyers with Introduction by Jacky Bratton and with an Editorial Note by Michael Eberle-Sinatra; British Women Playwrights around 1800 (15 October 1998).